Thursday, April 22, 2010

Obama and Neo-Leninism

The conservative pundits on Fox news and other conservative media has labeled Obama’s policies as Socialist and Marxist in nature. Even my blogs has likened Obama’s agenda, which is without doubt driven by a redistribution of wealth, as Marxists. I have also spent many words explaining how Obama’s movement toward socialism, is closer to what Ron Paul called “corporatist”, i.e fascism. However, neither Marxism nor fascism is really an accurate description of the Obama agenda. While the re-distribution of wealth is consistent with Marxism, Marx’s agrarian end game is totally inconsistent with Obama’s corporatism. Marx believed that the true evil was industry and capitalism. He therefore saw the purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat was to move society back to its agrarian roots. This was the reasoning of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who forced the entire population out of the cities of Cambodia to force an agrarian society on the people; the result of course was the death of 25% of the population. One could make an argument that Obama’s agenda using environmentalism has continued de-industrializing of America, but his corporatism is entirely inconsistent with an agrarian society. Hence we need to look somewhere else to better define Obama’s agenda.


Many of my prior posts have been defining Obama's and the Democrats current policies as fascist. However there is a difference however between historic fascism and Obama’s corporatism and are significant enough to be in want of another defining principle other than fascism. Obama’s corporatism has been an exercise in sleight of hand. The best example was the Healthcare bill (now the law), where Obama continually made back room deals guaranteeing the Healthcare industry healthy profits while simultaneously demonizing the same industries publicly. Obama and the Democrats have embraced the “ends and means” tactics that many on the right have labeled Saul Alinsky like. There is much truth in this, as Obama taught the Saul Alinky’s Neighborhood Organizing principles in college. Obama and his cohorts learned to do their homework and find out what the current populist views are, then use the terms to describe their policies, regardless of the true intent. A good example of this was the House “Cap and Trade” bill, that Nancy Pelosi defined as a “Jobs, jobs, jobs”, when the bill was actually a tax on energy use. There is a problem with this Machiavellian tactic however as Martin Luther King Jr said, “This is where the non-violent movement would break with communism, or any other systems that argues that the end justifies the means because in the long run of history the ends is pre-existing with the means.” While this re-direction is no stranger to fascism, the demonization of corporations does not fit and places Obama squarely in the camp of Neo-Leninism.


In many ways, Lenin is the real father of the progressive left (I guess that makes Karl Marx the grandfather). Although Lenin believed in the workers struggle and the need for the re-distribution of wealth, he was also pragmatic. Lenin established a fascist style leadership for industrial enterprises to boost production and worker expertise. But more than this, he did not believe that the workers would develop a socialist consciousness on their own. He believed this would necessitate an “organization of professional revolutionaries” to lead the working class. These professional revolutionaries would lecture and create slogans, banners or whatever media that was necessary to lead the working class; these professionals were termed the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia is defined as a social class of people engaged in complex mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them (e.g., artists and school teachers). As Neo-Leninism evolved in America, the Progressive Left is firmly in the camp that believe people in general don’t know what is good for them and need to be guided in the right direction. There is no better example of this than Cass Sunstien, President Obama's Czar of White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.From my blog Cass Sunstein: Obama’s Truth Czar",


As a scholar, Sunstien is known for believing that “people” (not him of course) as a rule make bad decisions, so they need government to “nudge” them in the right direction, this includes all areas of their lives, such as“ education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, (and) happiness..”; yes happiness, government knows better than you, what direction you need to be nudged to be happy. Sunstien also believes there are problems with the concept of freedom of speech. Sunstien believes that citizens with mutual interests, should not exchange ideas as “like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another.” Sunstien basically believes that the government needs to control the information you hear and that he “doubt(s) whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals”.


As I noted before, those that view themselves as the Intelligentsia define themselves as a superior class. Their task is to oversee the betterment of the ignorant workers class. Their goal is to create and maintain a Neo-Leninist government that will be there to control the expanding rolls of the ignorant class that makes poor life decisions and can not take care of themselves. The Intelligentsia needs this undeveloped class to mentor and protect, as it defines paradigm of their existence. This makes for a contentious argument with those that believe that all men are created equal and have the right to determine their own destiny, since after all, that is the job of government, and the life blood of the Intelligentsia.

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